Jack Smith set to testify publicly for first time on Trump probes at House hearing

In his opening statement, Smith will defend his investigations into Mr. Trump, and emphasize the importance of the rule of law, according to a copy of his prepared remarks obtained by CBS News. 

"President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the very laws that he took an oath to uphold," Smith is set to tell the House Judiciary Committee, adding that he stands by his decision to bring charges.

"If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat," Smith is expected to say. "No one should be above the law in our country and the law required that he be held to account. So that is what I did. To have done otherwise on the facts of these cases would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and a public servant, which I had no intention of doing."

Smith is also expected to say that he is "grateful" for the members of his special counsel team who investigated Mr. Trump in the face of public pressure and criticism. Most of the career FBI agents and prosecutors who worked on the cases were fired by the Justice Department in the first months of Mr. Trump's second term.

"My team exercised independent judgment and acted in the highest traditions of the Justice Department in the face of threats to our safety and unfounded attacks on our character and integrity," Smith is expected to say. "I am saddened and angered that President Trump has sought revenge against them, and others who worked on cases related to the attack on this Capitol, for simply having worked on these cases, for simply having done their jobs."

In an October letter from his lawyers to lawmakers, Smith offered to testify before both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. In December, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan of Ohio, subpoenaed him to appear behind closed doors instead.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Panel, said Smith answered every question to "the satisfaction of any reasonable-minded person in that room."

Following Smith's testimony, Rep. Daniel Goldman, a Democrat from New York, criticized Jordan for having Smith testify privately first.

"The accusations against him are completely bogus, and the American people should hear that for themselves," he said.

Following his testimony, Smith's lawyers again asked for their client to appear publicly, urging Jordan to call him to testify in an "open and public" hearing. Jordan said earlier this month that he had scheduled his public testimony for Jan. 22. 

Smith is also under investigation by the Office of Special Counsel, an agency that is unrelated to Smith's former position as special counsel. His lawyers called the ethics probe by the Office of the Special Counsel "imaginary and unfounded."

While Smith spoke at length at his deposition about his investigation into Mr. Trump related to the 2020 election, it's unlikely that he will be able to speak in detail about the classified documents case due to ongoing court proceedings. 

For over a year, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who oversaw the initial stages of the documents prosecution, has blocked the release of the second volume of the final report that Smith submitted to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland. Smith left the Justice Department shortly after submitting his reports.

However, in December, after Smith's testimony, Cannon granted attorneys for Mr. Trump a 60-day window to challenge whether the report should continue to be under seal as separate legal proceedings in the case continue. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump's legal team asked Cannon to grant an order blocking "current, former and future" DOJ officials from ever releasing the report.

When pressed on whether he could talk about the second volume of the report, Smith told lawmakers that he did "not want to do anything to violate that injunction or that order," and said he has not reviewed his report since it was submitted to Garland in early 2025. Smith told lawmakers that unless something related to the handling of the case was in a public filing, he could not address it. 

Behind closed doors in December, Smith defended himself from accusations from committee staff and Republican lawmakers that his investigations into Mr. Trump were intended to stop his presidential campaign.

"All of that is false," Smith said, adding that "the evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit. So in terms of why we would pursue a case against him, I entirely disagree with any characterization that our work was in any way meant to hamper him in the presidential election."

Smith revealed that he and his team determined they had evidence to charge some of Mr. Trump's co-conspirators in the election-related case, but said that by the time the cases were dismissed, he had not yet made final decisions on whether to do so.

One of those co-conspirators was Rudy Giuliani, Smith said, before later saying that it's possible the former mayor of New York could have testified against Mr. Trump. Giuliani, Smith said, "disavowed a number of the claims" that he made repeatedly about the integrity of the 2020 election in an interview with the special counsel's office.

There were six unnamed co-conspirators in the indictment against Mr. Trump. Based on details and Smith's testimony, they appeared to be Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Boris Epshteyn and Jeffrey Clark, who was a high-ranking Justice Department official at the time.